


Home Is Where the Heart Is

by amalli



Series: Of Returns and Reunions [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Axel is a mess, F/M, M/M, Multi, Reincarnation, Triad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 13:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13682982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amalli/pseuds/amalli
Summary: He's been having these damn dreams for as long as he can remember. Dreams of love and loss and murder, but he's never expected to actually see someone he's dreamed of. But he knows those eyes.Or, how Axel finds out that he's not as alone in this world as he thought he was.





	Home Is Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> As I described it to a friend, this is "5k of self indulgent nonsense that I will probably put on the internet for all to see."
> 
> I'm still figuring out ao3 formatting, so if there's any mistakes please let me know.

Roxas doesn’t talk for the first week or so, not to Axel nor anyone else.

That first week, Axel doesn’t care. Just some kid he had to tutor, right? An excuse to go get ice cream after work and someone to look up to him.

And yet, everything went downhill. 

Well, okay. Not at first. 

For a while, Axel and Roxas were best friends, and Xion too, once he got to know her. For once, he wasn’t running a scheme. He could just be normal person, have normal friendships. No backstabbing, no agendas, just the three of them on the clock tower with ice cream. He didn’t have a heart to feel with, but he felt light. 

That one fleeting moment where everything was great happened and then before he knows it he’s tracking Xion to the old mansion on the edge of Twilight Town. He promised her, yelled at her, that no matter how far she runs, he’ll always be there to bring her back. The heart he doesn’t have breaks when he says that, because he knows it’s true. He knows he’s stuck with this love for his best friends, for better or worse. 

She _dies_ appears and he can’t remember her anymore. Memories of her die the second she does, as much as he tries to hold on, and then Roxas disappears too. He doesn’t die, not like Xion, but even worse, he becomes part of Sora again. In the space of a heartbeat he’s lost both his best friends.

So he does what he does best, he plots. He’s not afraid of getting blood on his hands, he’s killed people for far less important reasons. 

It doesn’t work.

He dies in the Betwixt and Between, in a stupid suicidal attack that saves Sora, the boy he tries to care about in proxy, instead of Roxas. Maybe Roxas can see him, through Sora’s eyes. Maybe not. 

He fades looking into the eyes of his best friends, set in a face he can’t bear to look at.

 

Axel groans as his alarm went off, the bad taste of the dreams lingering like the stale beer. He feels like he got hit by a truck, aching in protest of the early hour and the hangover currently gracing him with its presence. His red hair is stuck to his head by the rapidly cooling sweat, and he trudges over to the shower, muttering about morning classes and nightmares to the empty apartment.

He’s had these damn dreams for a long time. He doesn’t remember much when he wakes up, except for a longing deep in his gut, love and loss twisting into something purely awful. He tries to forget, tries to ignore the dreams as much as he can. It’s not just the two he sees in his sleep, but other things. Scenes of murder and manipulation. A boy in blue, who he would have done so much for and who he did do so much for, who didn’t care about him in the end. A scientist cold as ice who he killed to gain the trust of the girl with sparks at her fingertips and the man who turned roses into razorblades. Deception after cover-up after lie.

His own betrayals were what made him sick in the mornings. 

He grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to scrub out the images. He wasn’t sure if the hangover or the dreams made him feel worse, and at this point he didn’t care so long as he could get to class on time. 

First day of the semester after all.

Didn’t want to be late.

 

The college he goes to isn’t exactly Ivy League- no way in hell he’d ever want to go to a school that stuck up, anyway- but it has a decent program for political science majors, so that was where he ended up. 

His first class that day is in one of those oversized lecture halls that most of the 101 classes got stuck in- so huge that most classes barely filled half of the seats. The professor in front had a mic clipped to his shirt that must have caught just as much interference as his actual words, and Axel felt like this had definitely been a waste, thinking that he had to be on time. Although to be fair, no one exactly liked being the one person to sneak in twenty minutes late, into a room with something around two hundred people watching. Still not worth waking up so damn early. 

It wasn’t until such a latecomer arrived that Axel actually stirred out of his morning stupor. The person who slunk in looked familiar, with a dark mop of hair and small hands clutched around the straps of her backpack. A half dozen forgotten dreams popped into mind the second that the girl looked up to try and find a seat, and Axel saw even at a distance how startlingly blue her eyes were. 

He felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on him, as he recognized her. People from dreams didn’t show up to a morning history lecture, especially when said dreams are pretty damn close to nightmares, half the time. But he knew those eyes. 

She sat a few rows behind him as he hyperventilated in his seat, suddenly sick to his stomach.

 

Axel might have missed most of what the professor was saying, but what the hell, it was syllabus day. Who gives a damn.

The history class drained slowed out of the room, everyone trying to squish through a door that was frankly a fire hazard for such a large room. Seriously, if the building caught fire maybe twenty people would escape before the mob of bodies would block the exit. 

The benefit of being in an old-ass building that had been made before fire codes meant, however, that Axel had plenty of time during the shuffle to look around for the dream girl. Tall as he was however, there was just too many people that were short and dark haired. 

He didn’t see her leave.

 

Axel was nothing if not tenacious. After the last class of the day, he went back to his apartment and locked the door. Everyone in the morning history class had been emailed the syllabus, and that meant that he could probably use the syllabus email to get email addresses, to get names, to get pictures off of facebook and find her.

Yeah, he felt like a fucking stalker. But not doing anything made him want to rip his hair out and drink until he couldn’t remember what a dream was.

In reality it didn’t take him very long to track her down. Stupid as it sounds, once he saw the name Xion, he knew it was her. That didn’t make him feel much better when he followed his hunch and found a facebook profile, with an old low-resolution picture of a girl with a mop of black hair and blue, blue eyes. 

In the end he did end up getting drunk again, trying to ignore the words in his head, his own voice yelling in the middle of a forest.

_“I’ll always be there to bring you back!”_

He felt insane. 

 

A few weeks pass and Axel watches Xion out of the corner of his eye in history class. He pays less attention than he should to the actual lectures and takes even fewer notes, but her head is always bowed over her notebook and really he just wants to see her eyes again. 

The history class has a group project instead of a midterm. Groups are randomly assigned, each with a different topic. The day the list comes out Axel checks which Xion got sorted into and goes to the professor’s office hours for the first time in his life to make an impassioned speech as to why he really, really wants to be in this particular group, that Xion just so happens to be in. He doesn’t mention her, though. That would be weird. The professor asks why Axel didn’t bring this up before the list was made. 

In the end, the professor lets him switch, and it is with a metric fuckton of trepidation that he shows up to the next class and the groups all gather for the first time. 

Axel’s the first one to get to the group spot, marked helpfully by a bent index card with the number 14. He sits and bounces his leg and chews on the inside of his cheek, and regrets the fact that he started smoking at sixteen because now he really wants a cigarette even if he hasn’t had one in two years. 

His heart is in his throat when Xion takes a seat at the loose circle of chairs, with what is almost a fucking dainty amount of smoothing of skirts and tucking loose pieces of hair back behind her ear. The Xion in his dreams was dainty at times, sure, but this creature before him seems so polite and poised that he can’t help but think about how many times he’s met her in his dreams, how she didn’t talk when they first met, didn’t take her hood off for so long and yet, here is this girl smiling softly.

One of the other people in the group takes it upon himself to start the introduction. Name, year, and major, the college staple. Why does everyone always just go around in a circle? 

It’s his turn, soon enough.

Axel shifts in his seat. “I’m Axel,” he starts, and notices that Xion has suddenly straightened up, turning to look at him with wide blue eyes. “I’m a junior, and I’m studying politics.”

Axel will freely admit that he misses the next few introductions, as he and Xion finally make eye contact. When it’s finally her turn, the girl next to her has to nudge Xion before she starts talking.

“Sorry,” she starts, reaching up to fix her hair again. “I’m Xion. I’m, uh, I’m a freshman, and I’m studying marine biology.”

Goddammit but her voice is just like how she sounds in his dreams.

If Axel was asked how the first group meeting went, he would lie through his teeth and talk about how excited he was to be working on the project with such a motivated group of students. Okay, that’s a fucking exaggeration even for him, because who ever asks a question like that. Frankly, Axel was not paying an iota of attention to anything but Xion and only registered that there was anything else going on when someone shoved a phone into his hand that he dutifully typed his name and number into. 

After that, people pack up, and because of the usual crush of bodies through the front doors, everyone is stuck standing around for a few seconds. Axel ignores the door in favor of taking a few steps closer to Xion.

“Hey,” he starts, and then realizes he has no clue what to say to her. “Uh, Xion, right?”

Xion is a few inches shorter than he was, even with heels on. She stands up from her seat and pulls on her coat and backpack. She regards Axel with an inscrutable look for so long that he wants to melt or vanish into thin air, and eventually he fully expects her to walk away from him without a word. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake.

Finally, she smiles, that soft thing that broke his heart. “I know it’s almost midterms and a bit cold,” she says, “but I heard the other day about this ice cream shop on Fourth Street that sounds good. Wanna go with me?”

Axel works his mouth open and closed for what felt to him like a full minute, before finally managing to make sounds again like a normal human being.

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

 

The shop on Fourth has a specialty ice cream from Japan. Sea salt ice cream, something that sounds like it would be really weird, and yet Axel as hands over his credit card to pay for it he remembers flashes of a clock tower and popsicle sticks.

This shop doesn’t sell the ice cream on a stick, but soon he and Xion are sitting across from one another with bowls of blue salty goodness. 

She’s smiling gently and he feels so damn awkward and shy. She’s like half his size, dammit.

“So,” she starts, and he might as well be pinned to the wall by her eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere?” Her tone is light, and the hand holding the spoon is loose and relaxed where it’s resting on her cheek, but her expression is nothing but serious.

Axel holds the ice cream in his mouth for way too long to avoid answering, trying to run through the pros and cons of flat-out saying he’s been dreaming of her for so long she feels like coming home.

“I could ask you the same,” he finally settles on. Safe, not giving anything away. 

“You look so familiar, it’s like I knew you from another life,” she says, sly, and his heart is stuck in his throat again. “And after all, you did say it didn’t matter how far I ran, didn’t you?”

He can’t breathe. He doesn’t know what to think. He stares at her, wide eyed and silent, for long enough that she starts to fidget. 

“Er,” she starts up again, “Or maybe I have you mixed up with someone else, I must be wrong-“

“Xion.” Oh hey, his voice is working again, “You are so far from wrong, it’s not even funny.”

Xion meets his eyes again briefly, before developing a sudden and surprisingly intense interest in her ice cream. She’s nervous where she’s trying to hide behind her hair, he notices. 

He swallows the remainder of his nerves and pops the big question. “You have the dreams, too, then?”

“For years, now. I thought it was weird, but it’s not like you can change your dreams, you know?”

“I thought I was going insane. Hell, I thought I was insane.” 

“How much do you remember?”

Axel pauses, trying not to just say everything. “I remember the clock tower,” he finally starts, “and you, and Roxas. I remember the Organization, and Castle Oblivion, and the both of you dying. I remember trying for so long to bring you two back.”

“Have you seen Roxas?” 

“No. Have you?”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t even know you existed until today. I still don’t believe it, honestly.”

“I’m waiting to wake up.”

“What do we do now?” 

“Find Roxas?” 

 

They trade every piece of contact information, and soon he’s trying to clean his apartment as fast as humanly possible because Xion is coming over to his apartment. He tries to tap into the smooth confidence he has more often than not in the dreams, but goddamn is his place a mess. 

Xion smiles at him and he feels the knot in his chest loosen, and when she curls up into his side to watch a movie with him he realizes he’s actually looking forward to going to sleep that night so he can dream of their past together. 

She beats his ass in video games, to his utter surprise, but his pride returns when he listens to her moan over the food he makes. 

A week after they finally talked, Xion brings over clothes and soaps to Axel’s apartment, staking out her own space in his closet and bathroom. She tells him she shares her dorm room, and she likes it better at Axel’s place. She crashes on his couch sometimes, and occasionally he finds her sprawled on his bed after deciding to go to sleep. Those nights he has no idea what to do, whether he can touch her, wanting desperately to settle in next to her but worried about boundaries. The first time he actually tries to sleep on the couch, she pulls him by the hand to his bed and tucks her head under his chin. She says his hand on the skin of her back is so warm.

He breaks down one night, shaken awake by Xion when the nightmares show him how much love can hurt. He cries and cries in her arms, saying he’s sorry like a broken record, for hurting her, for not protecting her, for letting her die, for everything he failed to do. She rocks him in her arms and presses kisses to his temples until he finally calms down.

He’s more than a bit embarrassed the next morning, but her hand on his shoulder grounds him. She pushes burnt pancakes at him, and he says he really should have made breakfast instead. She sticks her tongue out at him. 

Together they scour the internet for Roxas, looking for Xion’s eyes in a different face. 

They find him much closer than they expected to. 

Axel’s starting to believe in fate, or maybe destiny, as he and Xion wait outside the Engineering building on the other side of campus, waiting. It’s a big college, sure, so it’s an area he doesn’t go to very often. 

Still though, all three at the same university?

Xion sees him first, and within seconds she’s jumped onto the bench they’ve been sitting on to wave at him.

“Roxas!” 

Good god, she has no shame.

Roxas actually drops his phone when he sees her, and Axel stands up, trying to think of something snarky to say. He really starts to feel like himself for the first time in his life when Roxas looks at him. 

When Roxas approaches the pair of them, he’s reminded of the Betwixt and Between, of trying to protect these two when they were a part of Sora, how he had hoped so desperately to see them again. Their eyes in Sora’s face, and at long last, after a lifetime he didn’t even know he’d been spending waiting, Roxas and Xion had been right by him. 

“Name’s Axel,” he says, smooth and cocky, the nerves and anxiety burnt away at long last, “Got it memorized?”

Roxas might not have been terribly expressive in his dreams, but the second Axel starts saying the catchphrase, he looked so hilariously done and exasperated.

“I don’t even know how long it’s been,” Roxas starts, “but the first goddamn thing you say is ‘Got it memorized?’ Really?” 

Axel might have thought he was mad until Roxas starts grinning like a fool, and then he has his two favorite people in the whole world in a hug. Roxas’s hair is stiff and scratchy with product against his cheek and Xion nearly makes the three of them fall into a heap, and Axel could not care less.

 

By the time finals roll around and winter truly arrives, Xion and Roxas told their families that they were spending most of winter break on campus and Roxas had joined Xion in stashing clothes in Axel’s closet. He slots in across their laps during movie night, and actually manages to beat Xion at Super Smash Bros, leading her to declare that “Oh, it is _on._ ” Axel decides to sit back and watch the carnage with a glass of wine, wondering if he’s gonna need to get a new controller for Xion when she breaks it. 

They settle into each other, relearning each other’s habits and quirks, from Axel’s tendency to run hot- to no one’s surprise- to Xion’s impressive competitive streak. Axel learns not to bother trying to stock enough sea salt ice cream since it disappears an hour after he brings it home no matter how much he gets. Roxas snores, and Xion hogs the blankets, but he’s so goddamn happy that the nightmares seem far away.

The three of them get tangled in each other’s lives, and it’s on one morning during winter break that Axel wakes up with one of them on either side that he wonders what his life was like before he found these two again.

There’s been a few weird things happening, though. Nothing major, but one time he knows his keys are on the table behind him when Roxas hands them to him. Doesn’t matter how lost they are or who they belong to, Roxas can always find keys. Axel snaps his fingers one time for emphasis and the three of them are all speechless when sparks float up, little glowing embers that have no right being there. 

Little things have lingered from their past life, apparently. Roxas and Xion start taking up fencing and kendo, and neither has any idea what to say when their teachers ask them where they studied before. 

Xion is tempted to try and find others, she tells him one day. “Naminé and Riku, maybe. Not Xemnas or someone stupid like that.” Axel wonders what she’d say if he mentioned Saïx, or Sora.

 

Axel doesn’t drink as much as he used to, especially after Roxas comes over to his apartment one day and catches him sick and hungover. Through the pounding in his head, Axel wonders what Roxas would have thought if they’d met when he was still smoking. 

That’s not to say that he stops drinking. Just less, and with Roxas and Xion more often than not. Roxas is the type to get more and more adamant about how he is definitely not drunk the drunker he gets, and Xion gets very touchy the more she drinks. 

They’re both adorable drunks.

One night in the first few weeks of the spring semester, Roxas is busy with a paper so Axel is alone with Xion in his apartment. She decided that the best way to spend the evening was to make boozy sea salt ice cream milkshakes and put on her favorite cooking show, so the two settle on the couch with a glass. 

He’s midway through his second helping of shake, and she’s comfortably tipsy with her head on his lap, his hand carding through her hair.

“What on earth did you spike this with, anyway? Vodka?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a classy lady, Xion.”

“It’d prob’ly be better with something else, but frankly I liked the idea of drinking something that’s a culinary affront while watching cooking shows.”

He leans over and presses a kiss to her shoulder. “You’re so weird,” he tells her. She pauses.

Xion rolls around so she’s looking up at his face. “I love you, too, you know.”

Before Axel can even really process what she’s said, she pushes herself up and plants her mouth on his in the best, sloppiest kiss he’s ever had in his life. Her lips are rough from the remnants of dry winter air and she tastes of booze and salt, and he has no idea what to do. 

It’s a short kiss, and she drops back into his lap and turns her attention back to the show like she didn’t just change everything. He takes a sip from his milkshake.

“So,” what the fuck does he say, what on earth was that, “You love me?”

Xion blinks and looks back up at him. “I mean, yeah. Sorry, did I go too far?”

“No,” he says quickly, not even realizing at first that he means it, “I just, didn’t know,”

“Silly,” she interrupts him, “I’ve loved you since last lifetime.”

The show ends an hour later and Axel way overthinks the kiss the entire time.

 

The next morning he looks at Xion and all he can imagine is that kiss. He wakes up after her, and stumbles into his kitchen to the sight of her burning French toast. He steps behind her and takes the handle of the frying pan and spatula away from her, mentally trying to judge if he can save it or not.

“I might have to ban you from breakfast food, you know,” he tells her. “Did you forget to grease the pan?” 

“You don’t need to grease the pan for French toast.”

He holds up the sad pieces of bread. “Really?”

She sits up on the counter and he starts the process of breakfast over. Rest in burning pieces, ye olde toast, your time came too soon.

“So just how drunk were you last night?” he asks her eventually.

“Ish.” She even makes the hand wavy motion. “No hangover, though.”

He flips over the toast. “Were you drunk when you kissed me?” He stares at the frying pan and he can feel the blush on his neck.

“Not really.” She’s so damn nonchalant about it, and when he looks over at her she’s giving him that same soft smile she had asked him to get ice cream with so long ago. “I don’t regret it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He thinks he might be blushing on his ears. He busies about the kitchen, grabbing plates and syrup. 

“Do you regret it?” 

Her question makes him finally look her in the eyes. Even after months, the blue still makes him feel like he’s home. Like he’s safe.

“It feels weird. Like I’m taking advantage.”

She snorts. “I kissed you, remember?”

“Yeah, but I was your superior, yours and Roxas’s. I’m supposed to be the mature one, or something.”

She gets off the counter and stands in front of him. She’s small, and only barely comes up to his chin without shoes on. “I think I was always more mature than you. But I didn’t really give you a choice. So, tell me, what do you want?”

He remembers countless days on the clock tower, remembers dark forests and darker cloaks, shiny keys and how she feels curled up asleep in his bed. There’s a pain to love, he’s known that for years. But looking at her, he wants to take that chance. 

Slowly, he pulls her close to him, tilts her face up to meet him and kiss her. 

The last time had been quick and chaste compared to this. His hands drift around her back under her camisole, her fingernails scratching his hips lightly under his shirt. He feels light and warm, his lips sliding over hers and he’s not quite sure how long they stand making out in his kitchen until she’s pulling away with a hiss of pain. He has to resist the urge to follow her mouth.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

“Your hands, they’re burning,” she says, craning her neck around to look at her back. When she turns around, he can see red patches of skin all over, and he looks down at his palms in puzzlement. They look normal to him.

“I need an instruction manual for this,” he finally mumbles under his breath. Xion snickers and grabs the French toast off the stove. 

 

The thing about this development is that Axel has no idea what it means for Roxas.

As much as he loves Xion, he loves Roxas, too. As happy as Xion makes him the idea of leaving Roxas behind reminds him how love is damnably complicated. 

One day he takes Roxas out to the ice cream shop on Fourth, trying to figure out what he even wants to say.

“It’s about Xion,” Axel starts, “about me and Xion.”

“That you two are together now?” 

“Uh, yeah. Did Xion say something?”

“No, but it’s not hard to guess.” He looks out the window and watches the traffic in the twilight. If Axel had to try and label his expression, he might have said he looked vacant or wistful. “I don’t want to come between you two.”

“And what if I said I wanted you to be between us?”

 

Axel talks to Xion later that evening. She gives him that soft smile that he’s fallen in love with.

 

Kissing Roxas isn’t the same as kissing Xion. Where Xion is a slow tease, chaste more often than not and sensual, Roxas is blunt. Roxas all but drags him onto the couch and takes what he wants out of his body and mouth. There’s a wild part of Roxas that kisses like Axel is his, all his, and Axel gets so caught up in the drag of his mouth on his skin that he can’t breathe, all the oxygen burnt up between them. 

They’re like that when Xion shoulders the door to the apartment open with a bag of groceries on her hip. She snorts at the pair of them, at the sheepish look on Roxas’s face where he’s straddled across Axel’s hips. She leans over to kiss Roxas briefly before going to the kitchen. 

Roxas grins down at Axel and gets off him, sauntering into the kitchen. Axel knows that look in his eyes, and sits up to see Roxas hold Xion by the hips. She’s practically giggling, and with a laughing shriek Roxas spins her around and dips her like they’re in some old-timey romance movie and kisses her. They don’t look the part at all, but watching the two of them standing in his kitchen making out feels like he’s finally settling into life. When the two of them finally break apart, Xion meets Axel’s eyes over Roxas’s shoulder and beckons him over.

“Don’t stop the show on my part,” he laughs.

“You’re a part of the show, too, you know,” she tells him. 

Axel joins the two of them in the kitchen. Half a year ago, he had thought he was insane, almost afraid to fall asleep at night. Xion looks at him with that small grin of hers that settles him down after a nightmare, and he gets an idea.

“Are we really doing this?” he asks them. “All three of us? Together?”

 

Axel paws at the alarm clock on the nightstand. He has to reach over his boyfriend to smack it, and Roxas groans in his sleep for a moment before his snores even out. They only moved in officially a few days ago, no one had quite sorted out how alarm clocks should be arranged properly yet. 

He wanders out of the bedroom he shares with his boyfriend and girlfriend. Xion is sitting at the kitchen counter, munching on a bowl of cereal. She pushes a mug of coffee in his direction.

“Ready for the new semester?” she asks him around a mouthful.

Axel snorts into the mug and takes a cardboard moving box off a chair so he can sit. “I’m never ready.”

“You’re a senior now, though. Thought you guys were supposed to have stuff figured out by now.” She’s laughing at him on the inside, he can tell. He leans over to peck her on the cheek anyway.

“I have the important things figured out.”


End file.
